10 Apr Recommended Reading

Just finished reading the rather great How to Run a Successful Design Business by Shan Preddy. It’s quite a chunky and comprehensive read but would highly recommend it to any design business owners or freelancers. While there are a million and one books available aiming, with varying degrees of success, to define the creative process or provide design inspiration, very few deal with the day to day business side of things with creatives in mind.

This book takes nuggets of business know how from a large number of contributors and focuses essentially on the nuts and bolts of running a design business, whether big or small. At around £30 and over 440 pages it’s not the cheapest or quickest read but the tips on financial planning and pitching/ potential client management are well worth the cover price. Unlike many broader business ‘How to’ guides it cuts the cheesy ‘Go Get ‘Em’ crap and focuses on real insights from successful design businesses.

Next on the reading list is Just My Type by Simon Garfield, having heard excerpts from the book serialised on Radio 4 a while back I’m quite looking forward to it.